- This topic has 14 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 3 months ago by
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The title says is all.
Here’s the story.
This guy put in an lot of effort to cheat the Post Office for over two years. I’m amazed at how long he got away with it.
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(scrolls through court filing to find evidence number 19) – he sold gun pellets and cleaning brushes, used a pen to alter a ‘3 ounces’ to an ‘8 ounces’ and marked them as ‘gifts’ when posting internationally.
Also did a bit of rather inept social engineering on USPS employees. If you’re scamming someone, don’t annoy them 🙂
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Thanks for posting this. The judge’s opinion is very interesting. It did not say how long the seller was taking advantage of dropping his packages off late until a sharp-eyed USPS employee noticed something wrong in late 2015. The postal inspector got right on it, coming in after 8 pm to photograph the packages but then it took him a year and a half to get a search warrant at the guy’s house in 2017. I wonder if that was the inspector’s fault, or the US Attorney’s Office. I’ll bet it was the latter.
Then it took another four years to get this conviction. (The wheels of justice….)
It also looks like the USAO made a tactical error in the count for marking international shipments as gifts and not merchandise. All the elements were not met for an 18 USC 1001 conviction because whether a package is marked gift or merchandise is only material for foreign customs offices, not the USPS. The judge acquitted the guy on that.
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I didn’t read the court documents but I imagine they also subpoenaed eBay for the guy’s selling history. And if so, I wonder at what point eBay kicked him off of their platform.
I used to live in the town (Marion, IA) where this took place. I’m not surprised the post office kept letting him drop off after 8, even after asking him to stop. People in that area are friendly and accommodating to one another. It was quite jarring to move from there to D.C. 15+ years ago.
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Yes, they did subpoena eBay. It says that “eventually” eBay provided the information. I would love to read the presentencing report on this guy when it’s done. I wish I could get it on PACER but the reports are only accessible by counsel on the case.
That’s a funny coincidence about Marion. I was born in Iowa City but my family moved to Philadelphia PA when I was 2.
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On certain packages, (I imagine over 1 LB) the guy would print two labels, one first class and one Priority mail.
He would then attach the First class bar code to the Priority label. The package , upon visual inspection, appeared to be Priority mail.
Later, he would request a refund for the Priority label, since it was never scanned.
If the Post Office modernized their systems, this would easily be detected.
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Presumably the local post office could have clamped down on the guy by attaching postage due labels to his parcels. Royal Mail does that; charge to the recipient on a small parcel under 2 kilos is about 5 dollars whether there’s no, or insufficient, postage paid.
Having the post office fine your customers is the shining path to a negative feedback score.
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I find it shocking that they caught him in 2015 and allowed it to go on for 2 years? They could have added postage due from the get go and stopped it. I suppose they just wanted to give him enough rope to hang himself, which I find disturbing. Letting a heroin dealer or a child abuser go on for 2 years to gather additional evidence… There is no perfect solution, but this certainly can’t be it.
Imagine if this guy would have put all that effort into a legitimate endeavor? He was creative and relatively smart. He could have made so much more money by being legit. I worked with guys like this. Always looking for a way to scam the analytics. I saw plenty of companies go under once they got caught.
I see people do stupid garbage like this all the time to save a buck. Expired coupons, whining or lying to managers at restaurants, etc. So much effort. People would rather buck the system than succeed within it. Disgusting. I really hope he doesn’t get prison, but he gets taught a very harsh lesson here financially.
I also find it odd that the mail was all presorted without a scan. I guess I just expected the barcode to be the end-all when sorting. That explains how so many packages were delivered without scans this last holiday season. Our local carrier is great. The people working the counter at our post office are awful…whining about the size of labels, saying their scanner doesn’t work(when it does) etc
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I served on a Federal Grand Jury for 18 months. Yes, they definitely let bad guys stay free for months and in some cases YEARS potentially doing more bad things before dropping the hammer quite regularly. The AUSDA’s are overworked, the investigating federal officers are overworked. There is a massive backlog.
It was very frustrating to see the time delays before an indictment was brought before the grand jury many times.
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One of the issues with the USPS is consistency.
When I lived in an urban area, the only way to be sure your pre-labeled package was scanned, was to get in line and have them scan it and give you the receipt. Of course more people in line to get scans leads to longer lines and delays. In my new rural area, I just leave the pre-labeled package on the counter and it gets scanned in each and every time.
This guy obviously paid attention and worked the system.
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I suppose if you break it down… yer eBay business has stock buying costs, packing costs and postage costs. You can’t do much about your stock buying costs unless you’re doing a bit of shoplifting or burglary, or dumpster diving. We’ve seen what happens when you try to minimise your postage costs. That leaves the packing; short of scavenging I can think of two ways to reduce your packing costs. Burglarise a stationers or engage in long firm fraud with some packaging companies.
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